[Mono-list] Ubuntu

[Andreia Gaita]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Daniel Hughes <trampster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quote
> "so my team plays a double role there (OpenSUSE) or distributions
> where Mono is not included by default"
>
> So if ubuntu did not support mono by including it by default. Then you
> would package it. Ubuntu would get first class support from the mono
> team. We would get new versions of mono as they are released and so
> mono support on ubuntu would be improved.

I could be wrong, but I think you don't understand how packaging works
in linux distributions, which is why you're not "getting" the
explanations that have been put forth already.

The developer of the application provides the code, and the
distribution packages it. Each distro has their own rules and software
for packaging, as well as package mantainers and their own schedule
for providing new versions of packages. If a distro chooses to not
update a package to a more current version, it can be because of many
things: 1) they have custom patches that need porting 2) they prefer
not to touch system packages until the next major distro release 3)
they have long qa/approval cycles for updates 4) a million other
reasons, as miguel explained earlier.

We do the best we can supporting OSs and distros that don't have
package maintainers (or not even a concept of that) or where we're the
maintainers ourselves. We're not the Debian or Ubuntu maintainers. Go
look at the homepages of pretty much any software available on Ubuntu
and note that they don't provide packages, just tarballs. That's how
things work in the Linux world. I think we all understand your
frustration about this, but insisting on it when everyone has
explained it to you repeatedly is not going to make it happen any
differently. Ubuntu is extremely well supported, it's dead easy to
compile your own Mono if you want, you can use Jo's PPA if you prefer,
there's basically a bunch of different ways to update Mono on your
system with little effort.

You might not like how the Linux packaging process works, but that's
how it is, and discussing the pros and cons of particular philosophy
is a topic for other mailing lists, I think.

andreia gaita